Increasingly in today's competitive
publishing market publishers and literary agents are expecting the work
they receive to have been professionally edited beforehand. firstwriter.com
offers affordable editing services that will help you get your
manuscript ready for presentation to agents and publishers with the best
possible chance of being accepted. We handle all forms of material, from
short fiction to poetry, novels, non-fiction, technical material, etc.

Why does my work need editing?

It's tempting to think, in this age of
spell-checkers and grammar-checkers, that editing is unnecessary –
but in fact it is the silliest and most embarrassing mistakes that
spell-checkers will miss: things like their / there; your / you're; and
it's / its – mistakes that are so easy to make in the heat of the
creative moment, but which can be so costly when your work is being
inspected by a critical eye.

And how often can you honestly say that
you sit down and check the consistency of your heading levels? Or your
use of single / double quotes, and your punctuation around them? Do you
know the difference between the hyphen and the en dash, and do you use
them appropriately? These are exactly the things which will irritate
professional readers at agencies and publishers, and distract them from
the quality of your work. With the current competitiveness in especially
the fiction publishing market you cannot afford to compromise your
chances in the slightest.

For some amusing examples of mistakes
that slipped past the spell-checker click
here.

What does your service include?

Our standard editing service will check
your manuscript for spelling, grammar, punctuation, consistency, and
clarity. We will make sure that what you have written is clearly and
accurately presented, and easy to understand. If you would also like us
to suggest subjective improvements we can mark these up in the text and
provide a written critique of your work for only a little extra.

Who will be editing my work?

Our editors have wide-ranging editorial
experience in the US, UK, and beyond. To see the credentials of our
editorial team please click here.